Aug. 13, 2013

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Artist Shawn Palek of Slater brought his 'Traveling TARDIS' (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) interactive art project to this year's Iowa State Fair, and a steady stream of fans of the 50-year-old sci-fi series 'Doctor Who' has been stopping in the second floor of the Cultural Center to snap their photos with the time machine/British police call box.

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The Iowa State Fair already offers a time warp for those who like to sip a freshly shaken lemonade, pitch a game of horseshoes and browse the overpriced antiques in Pioneer Hall.

But among this year’s surprise buzz-worthy attractions tucked into some odd corner of the fairgrounds is Shawn Palek’s tangible time machine. It’s on the second floor of the Cultural Center.

Just down the hall from the tie-dye fashions and barbed-wire booth, in the gallery with the candle- and bracelet-making, just across the aisle from the henna temporary tattoos — there it sits as a science-fiction oddity adrift among the folk art.

You see the happy surprise spread across the faces of certain fairgoers (the clandestine sci-fi fans among us) as they enter the room and spy the familiar blue box painted in the guise of a police phone booth from 1960s London.

Palek’s inspiration was “Doctor Who,” the longest-running sci-fi TV show, predating both “Star Trek” and “Star Wars.” The 50th anniversary of the British series (which went on hiatus in 1989 but returned in 2005 more popular than ever) will be celebrated later this year.

The show’s time machine is called the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). The TARDIS, in the shape of a police call box, is to “Doctor Who” more or less what the Millennium Falcon is to “Star Wars”: the beloved jalopy that flings main characters across the galaxy (albeit also through time).

OK, enough with the sci-fi geekery. How did this wooden TARDIS materialize at the fair?

Palek, 43, admits that he was raised a Trekker and became a “Whovian” only after the series was revamped for the 21st century.

As an airbrush artist from Story County he’s a photo-realist who loves painting portraits. His TARDIS began humbly in his tent at last year’s fair as a single door; a steady stream of fairgoers stopped to pose for a photo with it.

Then a guy offered to donate seven more doors to Palek to use as canvases.

Eventually the brainstorm hit him to create a three-dimensional TARDIS. But after Palek built the box in February, it loomed in his home studio.

“My wife was like, ‘Can we make this thing go away?’ ” he said.

Thus was born the “Traveling TARDIS” public art project, his first such scheme. Palek’s TARDIS already has toured through an art show in Clive, a comics store and chip shop in Ames, and a comics convention in downtown Des Moines.

Palek encourages fans to snap photos and share them for his Facebook page and to follow him on Twitter (@TrvlingTARDIS).

Kim Oeschger from Philadelphia, Pa., stepped up to the TARDIS Tuesday and walked through its 18-inch-wide doors. She shut herself inside, where a black light illuminated Palek’s galactic mural that features the faces of the 11 actors who have portrayed the title character in “Doctor Who” so far.

Oeschger, 16, said she thrives on the show’s bizarre concept and intricate plots.

I stood next to Palek for about 15 minutes at the TARDIS as passing fans shouted, “Awesome!” or “That rocks, man!” in his direction.

Then there was Rita Weinberg from West Des Moines, 59, whom I might have taken for a quilter, not a Whovian. Yet she described herself as “just an old fan who connived my children into being fans, also.”

Weinberg came seeking the box because her daughter had discovered it at the fair and posted a photo on Facebook. “Any sci-fi is better than no sci-fi,” Weinberg smiled.

Palek might have tapped into a fan base that has yet to be fully exploited at the State Fair. What about a Whovian or sci-fi convention on one day at the fair, sort of a geek version of East Side Night?

Considering the exotic fashions already sported by some fairgoers, a few more guys roaming around in Spock ears or wielding plastic light sabers might go unnoticed.